Macworld's Game Room recently posted a new review of Star Wars: Empire at War, a strategy title which puts players in control of ground and space warfare in the Star Wars universe. Set during the time period of the original move trilogy, Empire at War lets players join the Empire or Rebellion in a struggle to conquer the galaxy. The Game Room gave the game a score of 4 out of 5 mice.

If you’ve played strategy games long enough you’re undoubtedly familiar with the concept of the Hero unit—he or she imbues your forces with special attack or defense capabilities. And Petroglyph , the developer of this game, has carried over that functionality with Hero units that will be instantly familiar to Star Wars fans: Darth Vader, Han Solo and Chewie and so forth (even R2-D2 and C3PO make appearances). While your Heros greatly bolster your forces as they go into combat, your opponent can counter with bounty hunters, who will take them out—obviously, to keep the mythology intact, not permanently, but long enough to turn the tide of battle against you. Some of the special units you can create as you amass credits and build additional installations are really imaginative—imagine sending in a Rancor to pummel an enemy squadron, for example.

RTS games can often get bogged down in micromanagement as resource manipulation and engineering become important factors in building your armadas or your armies. Empire at War is no different. Interstellar resource management takes a bit of getting used to, especially compared to the very approachable skirmish mode, and frankly, I was lost a bit at the beginning as I stepped through the tutorial. Fortunately, a tutorial is provided to help you get the basics, and it really does help. You’ll discover that each side in this conflict has strengths and weaknesses. The Empire, for example, is fantastic when it comes to material output and production, and can raise lots of money very quickly. The Rebellion, by necessity, has to rely more on subterfuge, spying and so on, and does that very well. A technology tree and other comparative strengths and weaknesses between forces is outlined in a map that Aspyr provides along with the documentation.